There’s going to come a time when you’ll stagnate in your fitness. You’ll stop losing weight (before you reach your goal weight), or exercise less and less frequently. You’ll stop tracking your caloric intake, or even stop thinking so much about food.

While losing weight and getting fit is simple, that doesn’t mean that it’s easy. In order for your body to burn stored fat you have to create an energy deficit on your intake. In plainer terms, you have to expend more energy than you take in (in the form of food). We measure energy that the body uses in terms of calories (technically, kilocalories, but most labels ignore the kilo- prefix). Obviously, if you’re going to keep under a certain caloric limit you’re going to have to know how many calories are in the food you eat each day. On top of that, you’re also going to have to track it cumulatively so that you know when you’ve reached your limit. Ideally, of course, you’d also log your food before you eat it so you can make decisions based on your caloric needs.

Looking up a food in a reference to see how many calories it has before you eat it? Simple. Doing it every single day before every single meal? Not so easy.

I’ve found that when I track my caloric intake and stick to a daily hard-limit that I lose weight pretty consistently. When I get lazy, though, and stop actively logging everything: I either gain weight or stay the same.

For the last few months of 2010 through the early part of 2012 I remained relatively stagnant in my weight loss. Actually, to be completely honest, in the latter months of 2011 I actually gained about 15 pounds back. Ugh. I stopped logging my food because quite frankly, it’s annoying and a bit of a pain in the ass to do it all the time. It works, but it’s a pain.

Where I Went Wrong

I had some major life changes in that timeframe. I got engaged, and then 13 months later got married. My then fiancée and I bought a house. Having moved to a new neighborhood, we of course wanted to try out new restaurants that were within walking distance. Eating with a partner instead of eating alone meant that my ridiculous habit of eating the same meal for five days in a row because I still had the ingredients for it wouldn’t fly. All of these things are excuses, of course, for why I wasn’t losing weight. Obviously, my stagnation was my wife’s fault.

I kid. I have no one to blame but myself, and the worst part of it was that I was a bad influence on her, too. We decided to get a treadmill instead of joining another gym we’d stop going to after a few months (I’ll have to write more on gyms later), which turned out to be a fantastic investment. No longer will Chicago’s harsh Winters be an excuse to not walk.

Back to stagnation. I’ve heard that dieters often face plateaus as their bodies get used to their new diet. That’s fine, but I’m not on a diet. I’m just adjusting my eating habits and activity levels. So why have I stagnated?

Was it any of the excuses I listed above? Eh, I’m sure they all played their part, but really I stopped succeeding because I stopped working the system. It happened slowly over time. I started to guesstimate calories in a meal rather than look it up. Doing the math in your head is fine if you’ve already looked up the food and know its caloric intake – I still do this when eating out sometimes – but over time I stopped doing even that. Then of course the unhealthy meal every once in a while became more frequent.

The habit that didn’t break for me was being more active. I kept up other habits too, like weighing-in nearly every day and wearing my FitBit so I could track my steps. Of course, I stopped trying to hit my 10,000 steps per day goal. But I was wearing the FitBit all the time and at least tracking how little I sometimes walked on a lazy Sunday.

So those are the things I internalized and made part of who I am. Tracking calories? Not so much.

How I Got Back On Track

I got back into Clean Livin’, full-swing again when I got the results of the blood test taken during my annual physical. Everything was pretty much normal except that my cholesterol was high for the first time ever. Not super-high, but my LDLs was a little on the high side, and my HDL (good cholesterol) wasn’t as high as it should be. My doctor said that if I should adjust my diet and increase my exercise levels to try to correct my cholesterol naturally, and if I couldn’t affect results within three months that I’d have to go on a statin drug in order to correct it with medication. Immediately I made changes to my diet and started exercising more.

I was scared straight.

I’m now four weeks into doing the right thing and I’ve lost 15 pounds so far. I’m still not down to the lowest since I’ve been tracking it, but I expect to be soon.

Writing this is clearly an integral part of Clean Livin’ for me. I’ll keep you posted.

People have asked me if I have been taking progress photos, and I’m a little sorry that I haven’t been. It would’ve been cool to see a time-lapse of my gradually shrinking body taken at the same place over a few years.

While it’s not nearly as cool, I did compile a few photos taken of me over the past two years (and a couple of months) so you can contrast and compare. The first photo is from March 2008 (in front of Faneuil Hall in Boston), when I was actually a bit heavier than I was even when I officially started my Clean Livin’ program, and the last photo was taken a week ago behind our house in Chicago, with me wearing a white tuxedo because we were going to my company’s “Prom” party.

Rather than trying to show how heavy I was I figured I’d show photos that I considered flattering at the time they were taken. So many before-and-after photos show horrible before photos with professionally posed after-shots. I figured I’d make an effort to do my best to show me looking my best.

Click for a larger image.

Today is the one year anniversary of my program to get healthy, lose weight, and look & feel better.

My progress so far: I’ve lost 112 lbs. (based on my average weight over the past two weeks, or what I call my “true weight” which smoothes-out the daily fluctuations in my weight).

I’ve been weighing-in and tracking my weight and exercise just about every day over the past year, and that constant feedback has been invaluable.

Thanks to everyone who’s supported me over the past year. I still have a ways to go (I’m still less than halfway to my goal) but I’m pretty confident that I can lose the weight, keep it off, and get healthy. I can see the light at the end of the tunnel.

This heavy bag weighs 100 pounds.

I should’ve posted this a week ago when my average weight over two weeks (what I’m calling my “true weight”) dipped below 350 pounds, which means I’ve now lost over 100 pounds since 16 June 2008.  My weight loss has been slow but steady as of late, although I can’t honestly say that I’ve been doing everything I should to lose weight and get fit as quickly as I know I can.  I think my weight loss pace will quicken when the weather gets warmer and it’s easier to get out and walk places.  I’m really looking forward to getting another running go at fitness this Summer.  The Winter has been particularly brutal this year and made it harder to go out and exercise.  I still go to the gym regularly, but I find that I tend to lose more weight when I walk outdoors a lot than I do from lifting weights or even from walking on the treadmill.

For those too lazy to do the math, it took me just a little over nine months to lose this first one hundred pounds.  I’m posting a picture of a “heavy bag” because I like the metaphor, but the next time you’re in the supermarket, pick up a pound of butter and try to imagine a hundred of them.  That’s how much weight I’ve lost.  With this milestone I’m about 40% of the way to my goal, with my new milestone being 125 pounds, or 50% of my goal weight.  Ideally I’d love to get halfway there by the one-year anniversary mark of my new Clean Livin’ lifestyle, but even if I miss it by a few weeks I’ll still be doing great, and I’m well on my way to being consistently fitter than I was last week. Every time you see me I’m a little healthier and in better shape than the last time you saw me.  That’s something to celebrate!

Back in the Fall the news screen on the elevator at work said that Americans gain an average of nine pounds between Thanksgiving and New Year’s Day.  A little research reveals that scientists say it can be as little as one pound, five pounds, seven pounds, etc., depending on which study or set of statistics you read.

However, the number nine stuck with me and since it’s not unreasonable for me to lose ten pounds in five weeks, I thought I would try to lose nine pounds while everyone else was gaining them. Also, losing weight over the holidays would help me be a little more smug when I got back to work.

So how did I do?  I lost six pounds between Thanksgiving and New Year’s Day – not my goal of nine, but I also didn’t gain any weight.  I’m going to call this one a “win.”

Besides working out (somewhat – I definitely didn’t go to the gym as often as I regularly do, or should have, throughout the holidays) I also tried to reduce my portions of holiday snacks, cookies, fancy meats and cheeses, beer and mixed drinks, etc. – but it wasn’t easy.  I figured I could have a little of various bad-for-me things.  I probably over did it.

I also doubled-up on my walking between Christmas and New Year’s.  I usually walk an average of three miles per day – during my “staycation” in Chicago (where I took vacation days and just stayed in town relaxing) I walked an average of seven miles a day, more than twice what I usually walk on average.  I probably would have walked more if it wasn’t so cold.

So that was my first moderately healthy holiday. Will next year be easier or harder? I’ll certainly weigh a lot less by this time next year, so maybe I’ll have an easier time avoiding the cookies, sausages, drinks, and eating out.

Or maybe I’ll be like everyone else and just work out more in January.